Advertisement
Published: July 14th 2010
Edit Blog Post
Today is Stu's birthday, which can only mean one thing... Vegas, baby! Ok, I know everyone loves New York and all, but frankly I was pretty ready to leave. Once again up and ready at the crack of dawn, your intrepid tourists then boarded a plane, touching down some hours later in Sin City itself. Everything you have ever heard about Vegas is probably true. Particularly if it relates to gambling. In the airport we saw poker machines before we saw our luggage. Thankfully the 3 hour time difference between Vegas and New York meant we would have plenty of time to check out more than the airport so we left them to be used by other travellers.
A shuttle bus that more closely resembled a prison van delivered us to the Monte Carlo hotel. (My joke upon arival about the chances of running a Monte Carlo simulation confirmed my status as the nerd in the group). Trying to get into the theme of the city, the boys and I donated the grand sum of $11 to the one armed bandits of the Monte Carlo casino. Actually I think Stu came out ahead in theory, but he never actually cashed
in the $7 voucher the machine gave him. It seems that even when it loses, the house still wins in the long run.
With our hopes of careers as professional gamblers dashed, Stu and Craig ventured out into the desert heat to take a first look at the strip, while Gez and I stripped down to our swimmers to join the many other guests at the hotel pool. The wave pool was pretty cool, but my personal favourite was the 'big river', where you could just float along with the current.
The higlight of our evening in Vegas was seeing David Copperfield perform. I still cannot work out how he managed to make an entire car appear, nor how he made a whole bunch of audience members disappear. However having seen the movie 'The Prestige', I now hold grave fears for the well being of the duck that 'disappeared'.
I'm told you can't go to Vegas and not take a walk down the strip at night. There are two things that will not be able to avoid noticing when you do this. The first thing is the amount of neon, the second is the incessant clicking of
people (men, women and I'm pretty sure even some children) who stand on the pavement wearing shirts proclaiming "Girls to your room in 20 mins" and try to give you baseball cards with pictures of naked women on them. To be fair though nobody was overly pushy. However the shirts combined with seeing those baseball cards strewn on the pavement wherever you walk and women being paid to dance on poles, bars tops and table tops in so many places did not really endear Vegas to me.
There is of course one other thing that Vegas is famous for... weddings. It seemed that every casino/hotel we walked into had their own wedding chapel, including ours. We snuck down for a sneak peek, however despite Craig's best efforts there was to be no Vegas wedding for this group.
Tomorrow, we finally pick up the RV that is to be our home away from home for the next few days. Next stop, Grand Canyon.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.151s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 10; qc: 63; dbt: 0.0799s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Andrew
non-member comment
O.M.G.
Monte Carlo simulation? Honestly Shell that's just disturbing haha!